Steamwrecked
Overview
Steamwrecked was made for our third group project at Futuregames. I was the Lead Designer and was reponsible for our Item System, Interaction System, the design and feel of the Ship, some of the player tools and other small features in the game. I also worked on a Bug Reporting Tool to help the development team better track and report bugs.
Year
2025
Duration
7 Weeks
Role
Team Size
Tech, System and Gameplay Designer
17
Genres
Survival Sandbox
Exploration
![[CITYPNG.COM]Steam White Circle Icon HD PNG - 1500x1500.png](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/107363_8003ecfbe9ba4922855e522f9156609d~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_66,h_60,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/%5BCITYPNG_COM%5DSteam%20White%20Circle%20Icon%20HD%20PNG%20-%201500x1500.png)
Research
Our goals was to make a game based on the genres we were given. In our case it was Survival Sandbox. After a session of silent brain storming we agreed on a steampunk world that is overheated at the bottom, pushing the player to venture upwards to reach safety using their flying ship.
Pillars
Game Systems
At the beginning of the project I focused on outlining the different systems for our gameplay loop. This was done by researching other games, what rules they follow and how our concept can be applied to those rules. I used Miro to outline and document our systems, before beginning the prototyping process.
More
Interaction System
One of the first things I worked on was an interaction system that is going to be used for all the items and intractable objects in the world. I used an interface for communication and a line trace for detection. To reduce it''s effect on performance I reduced the tick rate of the line trace.
In the future I would want to improve this by only running the trace after the camera moves
Scripts
Grapple Hook and Harpoon
The goal of these items is to provide the players with better tools for survival. They are designed to be found around the midgame and reward the player for exploring side areas.
Scripts
Ladder
During Playtesting we noticed a problem with players jumping or falling off the ship with no way of getting back up. We brainstormed possible solution until I suggesting the idea of creating a ladder for the ship that can be called from anywhere.
Script
Dev Tools
I like creating tools, which is why for this project I wanted to create a Jira bug reporting tool. I have created this in C++ and C# in the past, but for this project I wanted to try and do it in blueprints.
Script
Reflection
Working on the survival and sandbox genre presented a great challenge, requiring us to combine a lot of systems together and making them work cohesively. As the lead designer I took charge of how we approached combining those systems and how we wanted to tackle design challenges. Being in that position also showed me the value of centering feedback around the pillars of the game and player feedback as it made our design process and environment more collaborative and goal oriented.
Furthermore, I learned lot about the design of player progression and learned a lot about visual scripting and good practices to follow to make systems more reusable and less coupled.